Sweet Basil, Deliciously Inspired Greek Meals

“Food that’s frozen, not frozen food.” This is Connie Fassuliotis’ favorite way of describing what Sweet Basil frozen meals are to people who have never tried them. Another apt description would be real home cooking. Imagine you’ve just had a lovely family gathering and your freezer is full of all the leftovers you look forward to throughout the year. Your grandmother brought one classic favorite. Your aunt brought another. Your brother brought another. It’s the food that has been passed down and refined over generations, has become a deep comfort, and allows the spirit of eating together to linger just a little bit longer after everyone has gone home.

Connie is the owner, chef, marketer, packager, shipper, and every other role you can think of for Sweet Basil, a company producing fresh, home-cooked, restaurant-quality frozen meals. Connie is Greek and her cooking is inspired by her heritage and family, but she adds her own veggie-forward twist to these recognizable favorites that gives the food a lightness without decreasing satiety. Family meals were foundational to bringing this company to life as Connie brought her creations to her loved ones to taste-test again and again. Connie has extremely discerning taste, and if the food got a green light from this expert panel of Greek food eaters, she knew she had a winner on her hands. Development is often one of the most challenging phases of a food start up, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. It can make you question everything you thought you knew about cooking and about business, but Connie is so glad she pushed through the vulnerability of those moments, emerging from the other side of the development tunnel with two incredible frozen meals in tow and ready for retail.

Before these family-dinner proving grounds, Connie was a corporate marketing professional with an extremely busy life and, sadly, little time to cook. She often found herself eating unsatisfying, gummy, floppy frozen lasagna meals because there weren’t many other pre-prepared food options at the time. She wondered if it would be possible to create a quick meal that was not prohibitively expensive, but offered more comfort and nourishment at the end of a long day than this non-descript mystery pasta. Some solve this problem with strict, rigorous weekend meal-prepping, but Connie wanted to see if she could make things as easy as possible for people by offering something that could completely replace the less-than-stellar frozen entrees. Food is such an important factor in quality of life and that is equally true for those who cannot or don’t have time to cook.

The two meals that Connie brought successfully to production were her Vegetable Moussaka and Vegetable Pastitsio. These are two dishes that Connie says any Greek person will instantly recognize, though they might not be as familiar with their vegetable iterations. Connie prefers calling these vegetable-forward dishes rather than vegetarian dishes because she’s worked hard to provide something that every single person would enjoy and find filling. Since Connie has a background in marketing, she really understands the competition in the frozen meal sector and she wanted to make sure she was offering something better, so, very purposely, these meals are above average for weight and portion size when compared to similar meals. The meals are cooked by Connie and her partner, Kyle, with much help from family, by hand, small batch by small batch. She roasts the vegetables herself and she makes all the sauces herself, rather than bringing in any component of the food as pre-made. This way she has complete control over the ingredients, the quality, and the taste of the food. This food really is like home cooking, which differentiates these products from those that put convenience above quality and enjoyability. Sweet Basil makes all of these equal priorities to the delight of vegetarians and everyone else.

Since all Sweet Basil meals are cooked in small batches and made to order, you know if you see them in the freezer at the Co-op, they have not been there all that long. Sweet Basil and the Brattleboro Food Co-op have a particularly special relationship. We were Sweet Basil’s very first retail account! Connie recounted feeling nervous to make this first sales pitch for her company, but said that the buyer at the time left her with nothing but feelings of encouragement, telling her that the food was good enough to be distributed anywhere. We are so lucky here at the Co-op to have the business agility necessary to build relationships like these with local vendors and we want to say that the gratitude is fully mutual. We are honored to be something of a launching pad for businesses like Connie’s and we recognize that it is people who follow their vision to create exceptional products that help make the Co-op an engaging and interesting place to shop

Looking to the future, Connie is committed to growing Sweet Basil only if it’s sustainable and only if she can continue to partner with like-minded organizations that care about quality. She will not compromise on ingredients and she will not compromise on flavor just to push her products further. She has already done the complicated dance of the food she wants to make and how she wants to price that food to reach as many people as possible. While others may make a step or two of that dance with her, she will continue writing the choreography.

One exciting development we can share is that Connie is cooking up a new product! At this point she can’t tell us exactly what it is, but was willing to reveal that it involves filo dough (and is not spanakopita). We can’t wait to try it out, Connie!

Written by Sarah Galgano